


ghosts in the rearview

by somehowunbroken



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 08:21:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2262627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somehowunbroken/pseuds/somehowunbroken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Howard brought his ghosts home with him. They're not real, he knows, except for when they are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ghosts in the rearview

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a tumblr post by midnighttypewriter on tumblr: _No, but think about this. We’ve seen the Winter Soldier face Fury’s car._
> 
> _Maybe he’s done the same with Howard. Maybe his hair wasn’t so long yet. Maybe he wasn’t wearing a mask. Maybe Howard saw his face in the headlights for just a second._
> 
> _Maybe Howard and Maria died in a car crash. Maybe Howard swerved to not hit a ghost._
> 
> Thanks to queercap for enabling and for looking this over for me.

"Keep looking," Howard says when they don't find Steve and don't find Steve and don't find Steve. Maria says it'll be his legacy, more than anything else, that he kept searching.

Howard can live with that. Or, well, you know.

-0-

The thing is - the thing is that Howard is on top of the world. He's Howard Stark, civilian war hero, the man with the plan and the resources to match. He's got a reputation, he's got an incredible wife with killer smarts and killer legs, he's got SHIELD and Peggy Carter's friendship and he's got a son. He might not be strong and brave and here to save the American Way, but Howard's still living the life.

Except he's not, not really. His designs have evolved from tools to help soldiers into things that kill men, and while Steve hadn't exactly been a pacifist, the results are a lot more directly traceable to Howard now. He's got more acquaintances than friends, and then more business partners and rivals than people who want to spend time with Howard outside of the office. He's got Peggy, but Peggy doesn't have Steve, and even though she tells Howard that it's not his fault - straight up orders him to "let it go, please, for both our sakes" - he just can't stop looking.

Howard has Peggy and Maria and a tiny, tiny human they're calling Anthony, but he's missing the man who would have been Tony's honorary uncle, who should have been around for Howard to pal around with. The picture's not complete, and Howard can't stand the fact that even though his resources are damn near limitless, even though Einstein himself has told Howard that he's impressed with what Howard has done, he still can't fix it.

-0-

Maria says he should see someone, and Howard's fully aware that she's right. It's just that he's not the only guy who came home from war with ghosts, and he's got less of a right to them than a lot of other people who aren't getting help. Maria presses her lips together when he spills it all out, two drinks too many and a headache coming on, and she keeps Tony away more and more after that.

Howard doesn't blame her.

-0-

Most of the time, it's not too bad. Most of the time, Howard can lose himself in his work, and he doesn't see Dernier leaning in the doorway, doesn't hear Morita laughing at something Dugan said, doesn't imagine Barnes and Farnsworth and Jones with their heads bent over a map, plotting their next move. He doesn't get the ghost of Steve watching him not fix things.

The ghosts don't leave entirely, though. The Commandos don't haunt him as a whole; he wasn't close to most of them, and besides, he only left two of them behind. Hell, he sees Dugan weekly, if not daily. He's not haunted by the men whose lives he didn't have the chance to waste.

Barnes, though, Barnes he lost, and sometimes Howard thinks that's when he lost Steve, too. Neither of them would ever have said it, but there's no denying that Steve was in the war for Barnes, and Barnes would've killed himself one holy hell's worth of Nazis if he could just send Steve back home where it was safe. Howard's not fool enough to think he could've done anything to save Barnes, but it doesn't stop him from seeing the man when he closes his eyes.

"Couldn't have come up with some sorta wings, huh?" Barnes asks, and when Howard blinks his eyes open, far too late at night and three fingers of Scotch in, Barnes is sitting on one of the lab stools. He's slouched, cocky grin in place, not a hair out of line even though it's a war zone - but it's not, it's not, Howard tries to remember. It's 1965, the war's been over for decades, and he's in America, damn it.

"You're not real," he tells Barnes, who shrugs.

"Real enough, buddy," he says. "I get to haunt you, right? That's what you get for not making sure I didn't fall."

"Go away," Howard says tiredly.

When he opens his eyes back up, Barnes is gone.

-0-

It's worse when it's Steve.

"It's not your fault," Steve says, and he really is Steve, dressed in military browns, just one of the soldiers unless they need him to be something else. "You know Peggy's right."

"Peggy deserves you being here," Howard slurs a little, exhaustion and bourbon mixing in the worst way. "Hell, you deserve being here with her. With all of us."

"That's not how it works," Steve says patiently, and that's when Howard starts laughing.

"You're even less real," he says, wiping at his face. "The real Steve, he wasn't, wasn't patient like that. He'd've gotten real fed up with me ages ago."

"Then why am I here?" Steve asks, spreading his hands.

"Because one half of my fucked-up head wants me to forgive the other fucked-up half, and I can't decide which half is right and which is wrong," Howard says.

Steve crosses his arms over his chest and doesn't reply.

It's not surprising. Howard doesn't have the answer, after all.

-0-

"Howard," Maria says. "Howard, you need help."

"I need another drink," Howard says, pushing his glass at her. "Would you-"

She reaches out and smacks at the glass, and they both watch as it falls to the floor and shatters, pieces scattering across the floor.

"You need _help_ ," she says, voice trembling. "Tony and I, we're worried,"

Howard snorts. Tony isn't worried about his old man, that much he knows. He's at that age where Dad isn't hip anymore, or however he'd said it when he'd dumped all of his Captain America memorabilia on Howard's desk last month. He's got a chip on his shoulder that Howard knows from the inside out, and he's proud of his boy, whipcrack smart and taking nobody's lip, but they're both too much like the other to ever admit to anything like that.

"I'm fine," Howard says, still staring at the glass. Barnes' face looks back at him, broken and scattered on the floor, and Howard doesn't shiver. "I'm gonna get the broom."

Maria lets him walk out, but he knows it's not over.

-0-

Tony goes away, goes to college too early, gets out of Howard's hair and Howard's space and Howard's range of possible apologies that never bubble over. It's a relief and it's hell, all at once.

"Come on," Maria says, appearing in the doorway like a wraith. He squints at her, and she sighs. "The fundraiser? The one you put together for Stark Enterprises? The one you very specifically told Obadiah we'd attend?"

"Right, right," he says, standing and popping his back. "Let me just change."

Maria utters something he doesn't hear, but then again, he doesn't need to. He knows she thinks he spends too much time in his lab. He also knows she's right, but he's a little too old to change his habits now.

The party is something he could force himself to enjoy if he was in the mood for it, but he's made a promise not to drink in public, and besides, this whole business is a young man's game now. Obadiah isn't a spring chicken by anyone's estimation, but Howard stopped thinking about how many years he's got on his business partner a long time ago. Howard's here as a figurehead, Maria's here to be sociable, but Obie's the one who's really working the room.

"You want to leave," Maria sighs at him two hours into the party.

Howard shrugs. "Not like I'm doing any good here."

"It's good for you," she insists. "You spend too much time on your own."

He doesn't reply _I'm never alone_ , but she hears it anyway, if the way her lips thin and her eyes narrow is any indication. She deserves better than he's been able to give her, he knows suddenly, and he hates himself a little for how he wouldn't change it anyway.

"Let's go," she says finally. "You're right. You're doing nothing good here."

-0-

Howard doesn't see him, at first.

Well, that's not true. He always sees him, sees Barnes or Steve, Steve and Barnes, his own personal devil and angel duo, but this time Barnes doesn't say anything. His hair's a mess, grown out a little too long, and his eyes are bloodshot like it's the worst bender he's ever been on, and-

"Howard," Maria says quietly, tugging on his hand. "Come on. Don't stare at the man."

-and it's not Barnes, it can't be. Not if Maria sees him, too. Howard shakes his head and keeps walking. Of course it isn't Barnes. The man's been dead and gone for longer than he'd lived, and even if he'd somehow survived, somehow flown out of the deathtrap he'd fallen into, he'd be old.

Old like Howard, like Peggy, like Dugan. Old like Steve never got to be, like Barnes certainly didn't either.

It's not Barnes, but Howard's shaken anyway.

"Do you want me to drive?" Maria asks as they climb into the car. 

Howard shakes his head. "I've got it."

"If you're sure," she says, buckling her seat belt. Howard doesn't bother; he'd grown up fine without one, and it's something he's not forcing himself to get used to. For a man who lived looking for the future every day of his life, he's not accepting it gracefully now. He tries not to dwell on it.

The drive home isn't long, not if you take the highway, but Maria doesn't object when Howard asks about the scenic route. It'll give him a little more time to settle, and hopefully he can bury Barnes for the night if he puts more distance between himself and the man who wasn't Barnes. It's worth a try, anyway, and Howard would appreciate an evening without nightmares if he can swing one. He pushes the car, sixty, seventy, eighty miles an hour around the curves, feeling the ghosts maybe recede a little even as Maria grimaces and tightens her seat belt.

Suddenly, there's a flash, and Howard jerks the wheel in surprise. It's loud and bright, a flash-bang where one doesn't belong, and it illuminates a figure in the middle of the road where nobody should be this time of night. It's just a moment, just a quick outline, but it's a figure Howard would know anywhere, one he's seen staring at him a hundred, a thousand times, but it can't be. Maria shouts as Howard brings the car back under control, slowing, slowing-

-another flash, and no, it's not, it can't be Barnes, can't possibly be Barnes in the road with a gun-

-another, and Howard jerks the wheel again, because he can't, can't be the one to kill him-

"Howard!" Maria shrieks, and then they go through the guardrail, over the side of the mountain, and it's dark, dark below them, and the car twists as it plummets, just like Barnes had-

-and the ghost watches them, silent, with Barnes' eyes-

 _"Couldn't have come up with some sorta wings, huh,"_ and now it's mocking, the echo in Howard's head, Barnes' sarcastic voice and Barnes' dead eyes staring as he falls-

-and then there's impact, and then nothing, nothing at all.

**Author's Note:**

> [Find me here on tumblr.](http://somehowunbroken.tumblr.com/)


End file.
